Part 16 (1/2)

I hug my knees tighter. If Zach hadn't been killed we wouldn't be here. Sarah never would've talked to me so much. Tayshawn neither. Though we'd shot some hoops a few times. Almost four years I'd known them. Without knowing them at all.

”I miss him,” I say. Even though I know Sarah might slap me for saying it. Who was I to miss her boyfriend?

Instead, she leans toward me. I think there's something on my face and she's going to wipe it off. She doesn't. She kisses me. The shock of her lips against mine travels from the nerve endings in my scalp to my feet. Her mouth is opening. I feel her tongue lightly press into mine. She tastes clean and faintly pepperminty. Her mouth is warm and her lips smooth. I feel hot and then cold. I'm kissing her in return.

Tayshawn stares.

Then, when Sarah pulls away, he leans forward and presses his lips against mine, which are still damp from Sarah's. His mouth is a little cooler. He presses harder, but his lips are as smooth. He puts his hand to my cheek, both hands, opens his mouth wider, kisses me harder.

I'm shaking. So's he. I have no idea what's happening but I wonder if Zach can feel it.

When Tayshawn lets go I fall back blinking and watch as Sarah and Tayshawn kiss. My heart is racing. I'm not sure what I think except that I want them to kiss me again.

I know that none of us killed Zach. We don't have it in us.

PART TWO.

Telling the True Truth.

CONFESSION.

I am a werewolf.

There, I've said it.

The heart of all my lies.

Of the family's lies.

You guessed it already, didn't you? What with the fur I was born in, the wolf in my throat, my weird family. She's a werewolf, you said to yourself, from a werewolf family. That explains everything.

Now you're thinking, ”Well, she killed him then, didn't she?” This proves it. And accounts for the how as well: a werewolf. Micah the werewolf.

Except that I didn't kill Zach. I have never killed a person. Not as a wolf and not as a human.

Or you're thinking, ”She's crazy. She's not just a liar-she's insane.”

Werewolves don't exist. Not anywhere outside of dreams and stories, and yet she says she is a werewolf. Might as well claim that you're a doork.n.o.b or a s.p.a.ce station. Micah the doork.n.o.b; Micah the s.p.a.ce station.

You think my being a werewolf is the biggest lie of all 'cause it means I'm not the regular kind of liar who pretends she's a boy, a hermaphrodite, or that Daddy's an arms dealer.

No, it's worse than that: you think I believe it. That I am such a nut job I'm delusional.

You think I killed him, too. Trapped in my delusional state, believing I am a werewolf, I killed Zach. Believing I'm a werewolf is the only way I can live with what I did.

Except that I didn't.

That was a different werewolf.

Yes, there's more than one of us.

HISTORY OF ME.

The change comes with my period.

It hurts. Every nerve, every cell, every bone, the shape of my eyes, nose, mouth, my arms, my legs. All of it. s.h.i.+fts and grinds and groans. Bone stretches, elongates; the muscles, too. Fibers twitch and snap. It's as if every bone in my body has not only been fractured, but broken open, the marrow spilled. Muscles sheared from bone. Eyes pop. Ears explode.

I howl.

For the duration. For the twenty minutes of change I am nothing but a howl. It breaks and deepens and stretches and snaps. Starts human, ends wolf. It's just as bad when it starts wolf and ends human.

The cells in my brain. The gray matter. Squeezing and breaking my memories.

I, the girl, I, the human

is not

I, the wolf.

I could not do it every month. I would not survive.

Three or four times a year-in the summer-is the most I can manage.

That's why I am so good about taking my pill. That's why in the city I take one every morning without fail.

Because the s.h.i.+fting of my spine from human to wolf, that alone is enough pain for a lifetime.

I could not do it every month.

But I miss my wolf days and long for the summer, for the days between those two twenty-minute bursts of change-human to wolf, wolf to human. Days when I run free and kill and eat raw and never think once about where I fit or who loves me or what I'll be when I get out of school.

I just am. I know where I belong.

Until I'm human again.

BEFORE.

My father told me about the wolf when I was ten. That's when he decided that I was old enough to understand the weight of the secret. He'd have waited longer, but he had to tell me before p.u.b.erty, before my first blood brought my first change. The Greats judged that he was already leaving it too late. One of my cousins changed when she was nine.

Ten was a bad year for me. I was miserable. The hair I'd been born with returned and every day it seemed to be getting worse, not just on more parts of my body-my feet, the palms of my hands-but coa.r.s.er and thicker. No doctor had any solution. No hair-removal technique worked for more than a few days. I hated school. The teasing was constant.